It is a very known fact that being merciful to others is a very noble thing to do. Somehow I was reminded of the movie Gladiator where the crowd cheers – “Maximus the Merciful”. Anyway… moving on.

Merciful simply means that we take into consideration our feeling when we can do it either way. For examples, when we wins in a contest. We can be a jerk by making fun of the losers but to be merciful means that we should honor the losers by being humble.

There are some occasion however where we have to be merciless. Meaning – putting aside all our feeling and display less caring about anything. I’m referring to occasion when your time is wasted. Here are some examples:

1) Email
Fortunately for us, Spam Filter was created. If not, I wonder how many hours will be spent just to delete the spam. To be merciless in your email handling is to just read the title and if nothing good can come from reading it, just immediately delete it. If it really irrelevant, put it in the spam filter.

Learn how to filter email properly, and be merciless when deleting emails.

That goes the same thing with writing an email. Email was supposed to be very straight to the point. There’s no need to ask the weather, or how’s the new house. Unless of course the email is meant to ask about the weather and its effect on the house.

Time is everything, and if we can save some valuable seconds from handling email, why shouldn’t we?

2) On the phone time
Unless you are talking to family or catching up with old friends, there’s absolutely no reason you should spend 30 minutes on the phone with your colleague.

Cut it short, just say that you have some other urgent things to do. In fact we really do have other urgent things to do, like living our life 🙂

3) SMS / IM
SMS are generally a short form of short message system, If you are sending / receiving SMS more than 10 times to one person, isn’t it just easier to call that person. I know that SMS is so much cheaper, but is your time just as cheap?

IM or Instant Messaging is very similar to SMS but they are totally free and far more efficient. In fact they are so efficient, I would recommend it. However, sometimes chatting can have a very addictive effect, especially when people are usually funnier in chatroom than when they are in real form.

Log out immediately if you find that your goals have been met, or the whole discussion is going nowhere.

One thing in common with these three points is that family should NEVER be treated mercilessly. In the end, if we neglected our family, what else do we have?

4) RSS feed
This is another time waster. For the benefit of those who might not familiar, RSS feed is basically a method to read multiple blogs simultaneously. The application will retrieve all the new post from the blogs and listed them down for us to read. I am currently subscribed to about 30 blogs and I read them daily.

But of course I am very merciless when it comes to reading RSS feed, I just have a glimpse through what the post is about, and if it is not related to me, for examples, about a convention in Las Vegas or about things I already knew, I will delete it in 2 seconds and move on.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

5) Newspaper
I once a perfectionist, read the newspaper from the front to the back, not missing any news. I was at first trying to improve my English. Then I started to have this desire to know everything there is to know.

It doesn’t take me too long to realize that that is an impossible things to do. And what benefit can I gain from reading about the stock exchange when I am not at all interested in it.

Be merciless with your newspaper reading. Read only the headlines and if anything interest you, read the first paragrapah, if that continues to interest you, scan through the whole articles. Never read it word by word. You may have to start over when you finish 🙂

– I wonder –
Any other things we should be merciless on?

——– Personal Note ———
I am currently the secretary of the Mill’s Safety Committee and we have meetings every 3 months. Generally, the meeting is to discuss any safety related issues.

For some reason, the meeting will almost always be just like hanging out at the coffee shop. The committee will start very properly and after sometimes, they will start discussing irrelevant issues like salary, gossips. One time there is even discussion about bad neighbours.

I have to consistently pull them back to the agenda at hand 🙂 which is not a very popular thing to do.

This post has 9 comments.

about email, im, sms, phone call heheh sometimes, living in this new modern life, those things are our source of smile:)

even a simple chat tru sms with friends (okay, admitted, girlfriend) will cheer the day… yess it is easier tru phone call but ……lagi best tru sms heheh…. its like walking tru the zoo, its tiring better yet ride the train …..but it is more joyful walking tru it:D

other example of merciless……..

say no to a great nice sweet beautiful lady invitation to dinner when……..u already married:)

u forgot to mention about not spending so much time on blogging.. i mean compose 🙂

amirahsyuhada

04 Mar 08
12:38 am

how about merciless to correct some friend..lol, only sarcastic person can do that, but if not a friend who correct their friend, who else? lol

is it still in the topic? lol

banji

04 Mar 08
6:01 pm

filantera – a simple “hi, what ure doing?” will have tremendous effect if coming from our loved ones. That is why I specifically mention that those related to family should be excluded 🙂

Note : I did see your smiles whenever that SMS ringtone of yours rang hehe

3POINT8 – definitely true.. I hate it when I’m so busy and that’s the time they call me asking this and that, as if old friends. Even old friends didn’t ask like that 🙂

And yes, more than 30 blog post, but I just have a glimpse and scan through the articles. have been trying to cut some of them, but they are so addictive

banji

04 Mar 08
6:07 pm

haan – Feel free to add 🙂 I didn’t spend too much time on writing blogs, but I do have the tendency surfing away

So many things to learn, so little time

amirahsyuhada – Very true, if friends didn’t bother to correct friends, who else?

But, there are always different methods to correct a friend. I would choose the more subtle way of correcting him/her. In the end, it is his/her life to live, we can only explain to him/her what’s our opinion on the matter

The truth is, we may not be necessary correct after all. So just highlight to him what’s your opinion, and if that doesn’t work, try a a more clear advice.